


a little breeze tossing a leaf in a circle

by fadewords



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: & also wrote most of this months ago), (and also hc cad & co as adopted & unmatching), (i haven't seen the latest episode yet, Autistic Caduceus Clay, Caduceus Clay Has ADHD, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Loneliness, Mild Angst, OH also like. HELLA shopowner OCs, Sign Language, also dyslexia dyscalculia & a shitty back & shittier knees so jot that down., edit: ive seen now and honestly? pretty canon compliant, jester features briefly & some cad sibs are mentioned, references to cad's family that probably aren't canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: Caduceus scratches his leg. The itch fades for a moment, sated...and then returns. He scratches his leg again.The grass here is—well, it’s nice, it smells great, and it’s much more familiar than the streets around here, dull and dusty, not so much as a tangleweed peeking up through the hard-packed earth...but it’s also not like the grass back home. It’s dryer. More brittle.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 98





	a little breeze tossing a leaf in a circle

**Author's Note:**

> i delayed watching the episode by over 24 hours to write this bc i didn't want my cad fic sads to be influenced by cad canon sads, bc then i might've had to rewrite the whole thing u know,,  
> anyways--enjoy!!

Caduceus scratches his leg. The itch fades for a moment, sated...and then returns. He scratches his leg again.

The grass here is—well, it’s nice, it smells great, and it’s much more familiar than the streets around here, dull and dusty, not so much as a tangleweed peeking up through the hard-packed earth...but it’s also not like the grass back home. It’s dryer. More brittle.

And, at the moment, much itchier.

He scratches a third time, then folds his hands together to keep from doing it again and takes a deep breath. Focus.

(He hears Clarabelle inside his head, years ago. _Forget emptying your head. The Wildmother’s not about not thinking, she’s about the earth, so ground yourself._ )

He smiles, faintly, at the old joke, and takes another breath, deeper, in through his nose. What can he smell?

Wet earth. The herbs in his pockets. Straw in the cart across the street from his little patch of grass. And the grass, of course. Sharp, green, touched with frost.

He takes another breath, quieter.

His heart beats loud-but-slow in his ears. Wagon wheels clatter and squeak in the street. Feet shuffle and scuff in the dirt all around him. Voices rumble and jumble and mix all together. (Like everyone gathered in the kitchen long after dark, trading stories and insults in equal measure—except more voices, and harder to make sense of, and louder. If he tries to count them all individually, the way he’s used to, he is going to drive himself to distraction. Best to let it lie.)

Caduceus absorbs the noise and lets it sit. Then he shifts, just a little, swaying ever-so-slightly side-to-side. (The soil doesn’t give. It’s like sitting on stone. Comforting and comfortable, except that it’s cold beneath him, not sun-warmed.)

He listens, listens, hears only more of the same. There are no birds, no squirrels, no skittering insects other than the ones in his staff, humming away in their tiny dronewhine.

He hums back a little. Their humming increases in pitch, just briefly, up-down (an acknowledgment, maybe), before settling back and droning on.

Caduceus smiles.

He takes a deep breath. And another. And another. The cold soaks his lungs. Drips down and out—like cheesecloth, he thinks vaguely, except not.

He follows the odd trail of thought for a few moments before letting it fall away in favor of tracking the tiny shifts in the beetles’ song, the slight flutter of wind in his hair, the earth and herb smells mingling round him.

He lets them grow bigger, louder, more encompassing. Opens himself to them, to the world, to the Wildmother.

She is present, he knows, because she is always present...but she is very quiet, here. Very quiet.

And the world is so loud. The people, the carts, the animals, the chatter, the ring of the forge two streets down, the buzz of magic in a dozen different directions and a dozen different degrees of volume—

The world was often loud at the grove as well, to be fair, but it was never a problem, not really. But this….

This is...well, it’s. It’s a little much at times, if he’s being honest, and he generally tries to be. But in smaller moments, slower moments, like this one….

It’s a bit much, sure, but it’s also really something. All these people, all this activity and creation and _life_ —it’s wonderful. Just wonderful. Just….

Wow.

He settles into hazy appreciation and keeps trying. Keeps listening, running his fingers over the grass in front of his knees, smelling muck and hay and herbs and people and cold, and feeling all the while for the Wildmother. For something familiar amid the muddle, for a spot of warmth, for a breath of home, for a kind of sign.

The only familiarity he finds is in the leftover Casala in his pocket and the buzzing from his staff. Everything else is new and...charming for its newness.

There is no guidance today.

That’s okay though, Caduceus thinks, as he pushes himself to his feet after several hours of noise. Perhaps a more pressing need fulfilled, in the end. (Appreciation for the city which has begun, after all of two days, to grate on his nerves a little. Practice at finding nature in the midst of all this muddle.)

And as for the guidance, well….

The Wildmother will reach out when it’s time.

-

Caduceus slips in the door of the Leaky Tap, finds a table, and sits down.

His knees protest at being jammed at such an awkward angle in such a little space (both the table and chair are, as most everything in Zadash, sized for smaller folk). But it’s nice to just sit and take in the space, so he does.

People come and go, and the workers wander back and forth, and he watches.

An old human with long gray hair, strung with beads, makes their way steadily through a large slab of meat. They tip four gold when they leave. (The meal was only five copper.) A young tabaxi tears a roll into four equal pieces before eating each of them in turn, and talks exuberantly to a dwarven man with a bright red hat and a magnificent purple beard. (The man eats exclusively from the other’s plate, though he has his own.) A human slips out without paying. Their half-elf companion hangs back and slips two gold on the counter, apology written in every line of their face. Mister Wessek, the barkeep, smiles and nods and glances at the door without malice. (This must happen a lot.)

After a while, Caduceus asks for some bread, so he has something to do other than sit and watch, and so he is not taking up a table needlessly without offering proper compensation. It’s brought to him shortly, hard-topped and warm, steam still rising, and he thanks Miss Lauren with the warmest smile he knows. She taps the table briskly-but-not-unkindly in response, and smiles before heading off to a table with a lone gnome and beginning to take their order.

He turns his attention to the bread so as not to eavesdrop. (There is a momentary struggle to refrain from tearing it into four equal pieces, and he laughs at himself a little before giving in.)

He finishes the bread before terribly long, and goes back to just watching. There is the gnome, and the tabaxi, and the dwarven man, and as well a couple of elves, off in a corner, and….

After some time, a large group enters and looks round the room. Caduceus follows their gaze, and finds that the tavern does not have enough space for the lot of them. (At least, he assumes it doesn’t. There’s one table free, with...one, two, three, four? Chairs, and there are six—no, seven—no, fi—there are more than four of them.)

So he makes sure there are no crumbs left on his table, and stands, and pushes in his chair, and takes his plate to the counter with a smile and a few silver (he’s already paid his copper, but it’s polite to tip in Shadycreek Run, and he’s found the same principle seems to apply here).

As he walks around to the stairs, there’s the shuffling of boots and then the scraping of wood on wood. (The sudden, vivid image of two tables pushed together, with moss growing up the legs.) And then more footsteps, and then creaking, and chatter.

Caduceus smiles.

As he climbs the stairs, he notes absentmindedly that his knees are complaining again.

That is, he supposes, what he gets for cramming them in such a little space after kneeling for so long.

Ah well. They’ll quiet soon, if he keeps moving. Maybe he’ll make a little tea, just to help them along. Maybe a nice willow blend….

He’s running a little low, now he thinks about it. He didn’t bring much. Perhaps a trip through the market again tomorrow, to restock.

His head almost aches at the thought. It’s very loud in the thick of things.

...Or at least it was yesterday, everywhere they went. (Especially Miss Jesna Bree's shop—lovely woman, very wonderful, very, mm, enthusiastic. A shame he forgot to ask her for recommendations, tea-wise….)

Or, well, nearly everywhere.

Pumat’s shop was rather quiet, after all, except for the steady hum of magic (almost familiar, but nearer a whistle than the Mother’s quiet buzz), and very lovely besides. And very interesting. He wouldn’t mind returning for another look at the wares—the Dust of Deliciousness in particular—but he already knows they don’t include tea. No sense looking there for it.

So it will be back into the fray, wandering through shop after shop and stall after stall. Maybe it won’t be as busy tomorrow. Or maybe he’ll be more used to it, and he won’t end the day bone-tired, with pressure at his temples.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

It will, of course, be fine either way. And worth it besides, to have more tea. (He does not want to use up his supply from home, not so soon.)

So, tomorrow, shopping. Tomorrow.

In the meantime….

Caduceus rounds the corner and spots Jester. He smiles, waves, and invites her to tea.

She declines politely, looking a little apologetic and a lot distracted, saying that she has plans. Caduceus doesn’t pry, just nods, wishes her luck with them, and moves along.

Tea for one it is.

-

He gets up early the next morning, just after dawn, and goes for a walk.

The air is brisk, the sky is clouded, the cobblestones cool beneath his feet. He pauses midstep, closes his eyes, and takes a quiet breath. Exhales, and peeks one eye open to see if the breath is visible—and it is, but just barely. The faintest shimmer in the air, gone in seconds.

Huh. It makes sense—it’s not very cold here, south as they’ve gone…. But it’s still a little strange, that the fog is so thin and fleeting, that it doesn’t billow out from his mouth like thickest incense. (Like white dragon’s breath.)

A good strange, he thinks. There’s a beauty in it. (There’s always beauty in fleeting things, and, as the Wildmother has been reminding him, beauty in new ones as well.)

...Yeah. A good strange.

He keeps walking. He’d call it wandering, but he knows where he’s going. A loop around this section of the city, pausing near the wall with the ivy, exchanging smiles and nods with the dwarf helming the melon cart, and heading back to make breakfast. (And tea. Which reminds him, he needs to buy more today….)

He finishes the loop and heads back up to his room.

Tea first, he thinks. Maybe Fjord will like to share some, before he leaves. (He’s mentioned going on a bit of a walkabout soon. Nothing like a nice cup before setting off.)

But when he gets to the door it is too quiet. Far too quiet. Fjord should be stirring by now, he usually is. Either he’s sleeping in, or wandering the city, or—

Caduceus steps inside.

The room is empty. Fjord’s pack is gone. (Unease stirs in Caduceus’s gut.)

Fjord’s bed is neatly made, even moreso than usual, not a wrinkle in sight and the pillows fluffed to boot. (The unease grows.)

He steps forward. Looks round, a quick scan of the space. Squints.

No signs of Fjord. No signs he was ever even here, and none of his departure, either, other than his glaring absence.

No footprints. No note. No warning (a little warning), none.

(Just like—)

It’s a little disconcerting.

He steps back, and. What was he going to do, again? He hums a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, scans the room again for something to jar his memory. Finds only the absence of Fjord, and yes, of course he was looking for Fjord, because—because…?

...Oh.

Oh, right.

Tea.

He shuffles over to the corner and pulls out the stand, falls into the familiar routine with ease, the world going soft and fuzzy round the edges.

He’s already poured two cups when he realizes—silly. Fjord isn’t here to share.

So Caduceus drinks them both, and then rinses them carefully because otherwise there’s only one clean and what if someone else wants to drop in for tea later? There wouldn’t be enough, and it would be terribly rude to make them wait while he washed the dirty ones.

It’s getting to be a bit inconvenient, he thinks, having only three cups. Especially because they will be traveling again at some point soon, and with five companions (four?) three cups really isn’t enough, even when they’re all clean.

He puts the tea set away and nods to himself. That’s what he’ll do today, then. Buy more cups.

-

It takes a very long time to find a merchant who sells teacups.

He keeps getting distracted, is the thing.

There’s a lot to see, a lot of corners, and a lot of vendors, and a lot of people, and so many of them keep calling out so he’ll stop and talk to them. And he’s been obliging, because it’s polite, and because they’re friendly, and because quite honestly it’s still very nice to speak to people who speak back. (Flowers are great listeners, but they don’t have much to say outside of wordless longing for the bees, and the bees are decent conversationalists, if completely incomprehensible, but they’re usually too busy with the flowers to listen very long. And the mushrooms...well, they’re mushrooms. Who can say what goes on in their worlds? Decomposition, sure, but beyond that…? Well, that’s the mushrooms’ business, he supposes.)

...Distracted, distracted, by all the newness, all the sights and sounds and talk. (And, as ever, his own thoughts.)

But he manages, in the end.

There’s a lovely little place tucked away between two bigger shops, nice and quiet with only a faint whistle in the air, and it’s run by a lovely little halfling fellow, a Mister Elkwood, who climbs up on his own countertop to chat before asking after any transactions.

Over the course of the conversation, Caduceus learns that Mister Elkwood has a tiny little husband at home who paints things for the shop, that he’s had the place for going on ten years but is from a small town originally, further north, that he likes to watch the sunrise from his little window, sometimes, and that he sells all sorts of things—including lovely teacups, very finely crafted, and beautifully painted by the husband.

“And sturdy!” Mister Elkwood adds with a weathered grin. “Good for butterfingers and for travel, and you an adventurer and all. Won’t crack in your pack.”

“Really?” Caduceus asks, running over the singsong rhyme in his head. He’s had to wrap his teacups up in his spare clothes to keep them safe, so far, and he still worries a little. (If they crack, they crack, because things are just things, and that’s okay—but he’s pretty partial to this set all the same. He’d prefer not to break them. Also, he only has so many shirts, and he’s realizing now that they can only cover so many teacups. A set that’s less likely to _crack_ in his _pack_ is probably best. Although—) “How’s that?”

“Oh, well look here!” Mister Elkwood turns one of them upside down and gestures to a large black shape on the bottom. A letter, it looks like, but not in any language Caduceus has ever seen (and he’s seen a _lot_ , between all the mourners and all the siblings). A sigil, then, probably. Explains the whistle. “Enchanted, these are. Enhances dura _bility_.”

“Dura _bility_ ,” Caduceus says. “That’s nice, I like that.”

“Thought you might!”

“You thought right,” Caduceus says, and finds his ears are waggling. (Huh. It’s been a while….) “How much?”

“Ehhh.” Mister Elkwood squints. “For you? Five gold.”

“Five each, or five for the set?”

“Well, how many are you wanting?”

“Ah.” Caduceus’s ears go still. He frowns slightly, squinting, glancing up at nothing in particular. Jester. Caleb. Beau. Nott. And Fjord, probably. That’s five. And himself. That’s six. And he already has three. Six minus—oh, but there’s Miss Yasha as well.

...Maybe. If they see her again. And the others seem to think that they will, probably. (Just like they’ll probably see Fjord again.)

So—Jester, Caleb, Beau, Nott, Fjord, Yasha, and himself. Seven. Minus three. Which means to be on the safe side….

“...Four,” he says. “Yeah. Four.”

“All right. That’d normally run you twenty gold, including the tea kettle.” Mister Elkwood gestures to it, resting on the shelf where the teacups once sat. “Not enchanted, I’m afraid, but just as finely crafted, very pretty, painted to match.”

“Oh, that’s lovely!” He’s been in the market for another anyway. He might as well. “I”ll take it, yeah.”

“Wonderful, wonderful. So that’ll be twenty gold and a silver, then.” A pause. “Unless….”

“Unless?” Caduceus furrows his brow and stills with his hand already halfway to his coin purse.

“I do have a bit of a, ah, nasty problem with one of my nicer jewelry boxes.”

“Nicer?” Problem?

“Yes, yes. It’s of _very_ fine make, could sell for a dozen gold or more, depending what’s inside, but ah—”

“You don’t know?” How can someone not know what’s inside their own jewelry box?

“Well, I bought it locked, is the thing, for peanuts, and I thought—absolute steal!”

“For peanuts?” Absolute steal? But...he bought it, though. He just said so. For peanuts. Whatever that means.

Mister Elkwood gives him a funny look. “For cheap, yeah?”

“Oh. Cheap. Like peanuts.” If peanuts are cheap. He assumes they are. It’d be a bit funny if they were expensive, they’re so common. They just grow on trees. Unlike jewelry boxes. And speaking of…. “Do you want me to unlock it? The box, I mean.”

“Ahh, no, I can do that m’self. The problem is it’s got some kind of enchantment on it. Could be a kind of curse, maybe, I dunno. And I’ve been asking around, but it’s steep rates for spell removal, you know, hasn’t been worth it. But you said you know some magic?”

“I know a little, yeah.”

“Enough to remove a spell or two?”

“Well, some. I could certainly try.”

“Well then! How about a deal? You get rid of my little problem, I cut the price on these cups pretty sharp. You try and you fail, you pay full price and I throw in a bit of tea for your troubles. Or you don’t try, and you pay full price, and no harm done.”

“That sounds fair. I’d love to try to help.”

“Excellent!” Mister Elkwood rubs his hands together. “Give me just one moment, then, it’s in the back.”

“Of course, take your time.”

Mister Elkwood smiles at him, nods, and hops off the counter with a tiny _oof_. Then he scurries over to a door Caduceus hasn’t noticed, in all the time he’s spent here. (Minutes? Or is it an hour, now, or more? It’s hard to say. They’ve talked a lot.) The door swings shut, leaving Caduceus quite alone in the little shop.

He sweeps his tail back and forth and stares round at the walls. Not quite as tidy as those in Pumat’s store—as those in the Pumats’ store?—as those in the Invul-something, the…?

As those in the magic shop, he decides.

But still quite nice. Very charming. Rather interesting, too. Like the little ticking thing in the far corner, not quite a clock, but not quite not. He’s tempted to go over and look, maybe prod it a little, see if he can figure out what makes it tick like that—but that would be more than a little rude, so he doesn’t, and instead he just stands at the counter and waits.

Taps his fingers on the countertop, roughly following the melody of the song winding its way through his head. An old one, a little about the thawing frost and a little about longing and a lot about hope.

A lot.

He hums it, a little, under his breath. _Rose the pale yellow sun, the pale yellow sun…._ (There’s more to it, but that line sticks.)

Over and over, _the pale yellow sun_ ….

—The door slams open.

Caduceus doesn’t jump, but his ears twitch, just a little. “Oh, hey.”

“Hello again!” Mister Elkwood holds up a box wrapped in faded blue cloth. It’s humming slightly. “I’ve found the box, just a moment.” He hurries forward, sets it on the counter, and then climbs up beside it. “There we are.”

“Can I unwrap it?”

“Oh, sure, sure. This is just a precaution. Not sure it does anything, really, it’s ordinary cloth, not magic-proof, or fireproof for that matter, but it keeps the husband happy, so.” He gestures broadly.

“Oh, of course. That’s very important.” Caduceus reaches for the cloth. “Is the enchantment something to do with fire, then?”

“That it is. Burns you if you try to open it. Goes white-hot. Surprised it doesn’t melt itself, to be honest.”

“I see. Does it burn wood, as well?”

“Ahh...a scorch mark or two, but nothing’s ever caught flame.”

“All the same, I’d like to put this on the ground, if I may.”

“Oh, sure, sure! Here, in the corner. I can shove a chair over if it leaves a mark.”

Caduceus obliges, places the box where directed, and then sits down in front of it, cross-legged. Then he unwraps it, careful not to touch the box itself. Then he raises his staff, mutters a few words, and taps the box, quickly. (If the Dispelling activates the curse, the crystal may be harmed, so he doesn’t want prolonged contact. There isn’t much that can damage it, as far as he knows, but even still….)

The quiet hum shifts to a high-pitched whine—Caduceus shuffles his ears and hides a wince as it pierces right through them—which then peters out to nothingness. Silence.

Well, silence from the _box_ , anyway. There’s still the funny ticking, and the muffled odds and ends from outside. But the box is the main thing, and no longer driving through his eardrums like a pickaxe (though it echoes), so….

“There we are,” Caduceus says. “Should be safe.”

“Should? Did the spell work or not?”

“Well, it feels like it took, yeah. If you have a key I’d be happy to try it myself, if you’re worried.”

“I don’t have a key.” A pause, an appraising eye. “I don’t suppose you’re any good with a lockpick?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I do know somebody who’s pretty good, I could go ask her if you like.”

“Nah. I’ll just try it myself later, I suppose. Have some ice packs handy.”

“Sure,” Caduceus says. “That sounds like a good idea.” A pause, and then he reaches for his coin purse again. “So, will that—oh! Actually, if you’d like to try it now, I have something a little better than ice packs.”

“...Would that be more magic?”

“It would! Healing spells are my specialty.” He pauses. “Well, more or less.”

“...Sure, why the hells not.” Mister Elkwood pulls a set of lockpicks out his pocket.

“I’ll just ready one, then.”

“You do that,” he says a bit dryly, and sucks in a breath between his teeth, and begins to pick the lock, gingerly, with the same air Colton always got when picking up other people’s dirty shirts. Caduceus prepares a spell, and holds it. (It feels, as always, a bit like holding his breath, like holding perfectly, perfectly still.)

Barely a moment later, the lock pings open, and Mister Elkwood lets out a delighted laugh, lifts the lid, and begins to go through the box’s contents. Caduceus lets the spell dissipate and steps back rather than stay to watch. (It won’t do to be nosy.)

He walks back to the counter and resists the urge to stick his hands in his pockets, or cross his arms, or lean on the counter. (It won’t do to be rude.) And he waits.

Suppresses a yawn, after a while. And waits. And….

“Sorry about that! Where were we?”

Caduceus blinks, ears twitching. “Oh, we were just….” He trails off. He knows what he means to say, but the words are a little slippery. “...discussing teacups,” he says, after a beat.

“Discussing _payment_ , I think you mean.” Mister Elkwood grins.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Well, you’ve saved me an awful lot of trouble and coin here today, so that’ll knock back the price nineteen gold, six silver, and, mmm, about four copper.”

“Oh, wow,” Caduceus says, because it seems the sort of thing to say. He spent much more than that the day before yesterday, but who knows. Maybe nineteen gold is still a lot. And even if it isn’t, well, Mister Elkwood is clearly doing him a favor, allowing this trade, so it’s only polite to thank him.

...Except, he realizes belatedly, he hasn’t actually thanked him yet. He should probably do that.

“Thank you. That’s really nice.” He pulls out his coin purse. “So that’ll be….” He stalls, working out the subtraction in his head. One gold left, minus six silver and four copper. Which is...is…? There’s—that’s ten silver to a gold, so minus six is four silver, but minus four copper, so—four silver and...no, three silver and. And. How many copper? What’s the remainder? How...?

“Tell you what,” Mister Elkwood says, and Caduceus blinks away fuzz before it can coalesce (great word, coalesce) into the pinpricks of a headache. “Because you’ve been so helpful, and I like you, and there were some lovely things in that box, we’ll make it an even three silver. Sound good?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Caduceus says with a warm smile. “Thank you.”

“Of course, of course. Now here you are, gather those up, that’s it. There you are. Lovely.” A short pause, a glance behind the counter at the box, a warm smile. “Now, is there anything else you were wanting, or will that be all for today?”

Caduceus recognizes the cue to leave and stands a little straighter. “I think that’ll be all for now, yeah. I should get going, but thank you for these.” He pats his bag, and his pocket. “And the conversation. It was lovely.” He bobs his head. “Have a nice day, Mister Elkwood.”

“Yeah, you too, Mister Clay. See you round.”

Caduceus nods, and waves, and leaves.

-

He means to head straight home, but finds himself walking through the marketplace again instead, up and down streets, caught in a swirl of people and noise and magic. (There is so much magic here.)

(There was magic at home, too, of course, a low-level hum in his ears like honey. The enchantments on the grove, singing soft and low. But this—this is something else. Different sounds, some whistling, some crackling, some humming, and different notes, and more of them, overlapping, clustered, push-and-pull, come-and-go. And loud. Always loud.)

He drifts from buzz to drone to hum to whistle to near-screech, down different streets. He wonders if the different notes have meaning, if the different pitches are baked into the spells with intent or if they’re a senseless byproduct. He wonders if it’s possible to make a spell sing the way you want it to, or if they simply sound how they sound.

Caduceus tucks the thought aside. Perhaps he can experiment some, later. Or perhaps he can ask someone more studied. Jester, perhaps, or Caleb. He’s not a cleric, but he has those spell books, so maybe he’s a little more versed in the general theory…?

Caduceus stumbles, presses his staff firm to the ground to keep from falling. It sinks a good inch in the dirt.

...Dirt?

Caduceus blinks, and finds he’s left cobblestones behind, and come back to the little patch of grass he’s been using for meditation the last couple days.

Well. He’s been meaning to drop by. Now’s as good a time as any.

So he drops to the ground, and takes a deep breath, and lets it out slow, and listens.

-

Time passes.

-

He stands, maybe half an hour later, and his knees hurt. So does his head, just faintly, round the temples. (He’s listened a little too hard. But that’s all right. It’s hardly noticeable, and it’ll stop as soon as he gets moving and stops thinking about it, anyway.)

He stretches, takes a lingering look around, as though the Wildmother might have sent a sign in the last three seconds. (She hasn’t, of course. It isn’t time.) Nods to himself, once, taps his staff on the ground twice, and heads for the inn.

It’s probably about time for lunch.

-

It is, in fact, well past lunch. It’s nearing dinner.

That’s all right, though. Food is food. He’ll just drop his things in the room and then maybe he can invite Fjord to—

Oh. Right.

Silly.

But perhaps one of the others, if he can spot them, and they aren’t too busy.

Yeah. He’ll go drop his things and have a look around.

-

Caduceus sets his bag on his bed and unpacks the new teacups carefully, setting them all in a row with the kettle on the end. Then he unpacks the old ones, unwrapping them gingerly, and sets them beside the new ones.

They don’t match, of course, but that’s never been the case much with the Clays anyway. Why should the family tea set be any different?

He smiles to himself.

Perhaps before dinner he can make a quick pot of tea, use one of the new cups. Perhaps the others might like to join him.

He abandons the cups on the bed and ducks out into the hall. Taps lightly on one door. Nothing. Taps lightly on the next. Still nothing.

Ah, well. Breaking in the new set can wait.

He goes back to his room and sets the old kettle to boil. Picks up one of the old cups, and ponders which blend to use. There’s the Graves family, he supposes. Or maybe….

Oh! Oh no. He’d meant to buy more tea, but he got so busy with the cups….

Ah, well. There’s always tomorrow.

For now, he can just take...maybe not the Graves. One of the later families. More, mm, expansive. Less limited stock.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

He selects one, sets it to steep, and starts putting away the teacups, one-by-one, and wrapping the older ones carefully. When he’s finished, he has to unwrap one of them again, because he’s gone and tucked away the entire lot.

 _Like a little breeze tossing a leaf in a circle_ , he thinks in his father’s teasing voice, _wondering why it goes nowhere._

He smiles as he pours himself a cup. Smiles as he drinks it. Smiles as he wonders what to do next. Check the shops for tea?

Oh, but it’s late. He’s already decided to do that tomorrow.

...But then, it isn’t that late. Some may still be open, so maybe if he just…?

It won’t hurt to check, he reasons. Just very quickly.

He sets his tea aside, gathers his staff and his coin purse, and heads downstairs.

-

It’s busy. Folks crowd round the tables and round the bar, eating and drinking and laughing and reminding him of the faint pressure at his temples that never quite faded and wow it wasn’t this busy earlier and oh! It’s dinnertime, isn’t it?

And he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. (...Actually. Did he eat breakfast? He was going to, after his walk…. Tea and oatmeal with Fjord, that was the plan. And Fjord left early, and Caduceus had tea…and forgot the oatmeal.)

(Which, really, explains a lot. The scatterbrains, the lingering pressure, even the desire to wander. He always gets a bit of the pull when he’s hungry.)

Now that just won’t do.

-

Caduceus finds an empty table and requests what’s quickly becoming his usual—the only vegetarian dinner option this place offers.

It’s a very passable dish, though, he’s not complaining.

He savors it as he watches the crowd swell and shrink, as he makes conversation with the staff, as he explains to a curious old human what he is and where he’s from and how he made his staff (with a lot of help, he says).

Eventually, he finishes both conversation and cabbage, tips the staff, and heads back up to his room. (It’s far too late for the shops to be open, according to Mister Wessek, so the tea will have to wait.)

He goes to sit on his bed and nearly upends the cup still lying there. Manages to save it in time, but only just.

Lucky.

He drains the cup and makes a face. It’s cold, and far more bitter than he remembers, and hurts his teeth.

Urgh.

Caduceus sets the cup aside. Then picks it up. Rinses it, carefully. Puts it away.

Yawns.

Looks a bit blearily round the room. His gaze lands on Fjord’s bed.

He smiles, a little, and glances elsewhere.

Yawns again. Contemplates sleeping. It’s getting pretty late, and now that he’s eaten he’s gone a different kind of fuzzy. Content, instead.

...He may as well.

So he climbs into bed and lays down.

Climbs out. Unstraps his armor, shaking his head at himself with a wry grin aimed at no one in particular. Puts it in a neat pile against the wall. Lays down again. Shifts. Curls a little sideways.

Goes over the day in his head. The morning walk. The missing dragon breath. The empty room. The wandering. Mister Elkwood. The wandering. The grass. The dinner. The humming. The noise. The dinner.

...Oops. That’s two dinners. Two wanderings. Two….

-

Caduceus makes porridge first thing in the morning.

Well. Not first thing. First thing he does is get up, stretch, and put his armor back on.

He rolls his shoulders after and sighs. That’s better.

And then he goes for a short stroll, just a meander up and down the street, past the brambles, past the dwarf, round the corner and back. And then he returns to the room.

And then he makes porridge. A series of automatic steps, heat the water, pour the grains, mix together, stir, wait. Hum while waiting.

He very nearly makes enough for two, but stops himself in time. He has to laugh at that, a little. How quickly he falls into habits. (How slowly he falls out of them.)

He shakes himself, still laughing quietly, and sits down to eat.

-

He washes his bowl and goes to make a cup of tea and then remembers—he doesn’t want to use up his entire supply. He needs to go shopping for more.

So that’s today’s mission: buy more tea.

-

So he goes out, and he buys more tea.

-

Well. He _looks_ for more tea.

It takes a while. Again, he keeps getting distracted.

It’s only to be expected, really, he tells himself, thinking of porridge and teacups and raised hands. He’s thrown off his whole routine—again—by skipping tea. (Risky business for a creature of habit, especially when that creature is a Clay.)

And even that aside, the marketplace is very busy, and there is, as ever, just a whole lot to notice. Intricate lettering on shop-signs, snippets of conversation in a dozen different languages, strange spices, fascinating displays, odd folk.

He wanders, for a while.

Talks, now and again, enjoys the fleeting company, buys a trinket or two to be polite. Weaves his way around and through the crowds, which often part for him like grains in the wind. (Perks of being tall, he supposes.)

The day wears on.

The crowds grow thicker, part less like grains and more like honey, the awful way it gets when it’s halfway between time-crystallized and water-warmed. Clumpy, sticky, slow. Too many bodies in too little a space, bumping and jostling and brushing his fur the wrong way, sending false spiders up his skin. Too much breath fogging the air, too muggy in the cold.

He fixes a pleasant smile on his face, tucks his free hand in his pocket, clutches his staff close to his chest. Keeps moving, humming inside his head, a simple tune cutting through the early-afternoon shuffle. It’s nice. (He’d hum it aloud, but he can’t manage all the harmonies.)

Someone elbows him in the back. He smiles wider, walks a little quicker.

Someone bumps into his hip. He hums an apology, sidesteps, takes a deep breath, and another.

Someone calls out to someone else, inches to his left, to be heard above the crowd. His ears flick sharp toward the sound and sharper away.

Someone drops a crate on the street-corner some yards away and he fights the urge to pull on his ears. Deep breaths. Deeper. Deeper.

More someones mutter and jostle and breathe and jingle their keys and stink of sweat and brush closer and closer and slower and slower and—

He wrestles his way out of the sticky cluster. Squints as the sun shines past a drifting cloud, piercing his eyes, shuttering his vision white with rainbow edges. Beelines for the nearest building, keeps a shoulder to the rough wall, first for space and then for the scrape of brick on fur.

He’ll end up with a mark, he’s distantly aware, if he doesn’t stop pressing so hard as he walks, as though to make the wall give beneath him—

But he doesn’t care, just keeps walking, leaning against it and focusing only on the terrible-good-terrible feel of stone on skin through wrong-brushed fur. Wants to close his eyes so it’s all that’s left, but doesn’t. Might run out of wall. Run into someone. Crash.

That would be bad.

Worse than right now. Which is saying something, because right now is—is—is not very great. Is—

A lot.

Is—

He grinds his teeth, presses his shoulder harder to the wall until it burns.

Keeps walking, squinting ahead, until he runs out of wall after all. Finds he’s come to a corner, turns it, hugging the stone, and keeps moving.

Finds an alcove. A small stone bench, low to the ground. (Too low.)

He wants, irrationally, to kick it the instant he sees it. It’s at shin height, it would be easy.

He doesn’t. Just sits, impossibly low to the ground, knees up by his ears, and grinds his teeth more. More. More.

Stops himself, after an age. Chews on the end of his sleeve instead. Not very sanitary, maybe, but easier on the teeth. (Safer, his aunt says in his head. Better soggy sleeves than broken teeth or broken skin.) (He’s inclined to agree.)

So he chews on the sleeve-end. Chews on the sleeve-end. Chews on the sleeve-end. Chews on the….

Caduceus closes his eyes. (They almost ache.)

Light dances orange and red and blue-green behind his lids. 

He breathes.

Stops chewing, after a while. His mouth feels like gossamer fabric.

Listens to distant cacophony, ears flicking.

Breathes. Catches fruit and fabric and...something fresh, something green, something—sharp! A sharp herbal smell, almost floral, coming from...well, somewhere.

...Oh! Herbs—tea! He’s here for tea. That’s right.

Tea….

He breathes on the bench for a little while longer, considering a dozen different varieties, a number of blends he hopes to find the ingredients for. A number of suppositions about his companions’ preferences. (He would have preferred to ask, of course, that’s the best way of telling...but everyone has been so busy the past few days. He’s hardly had a moment, much less a good quiet one, for a conversation like that. So suppositions it is.)

After he settles easily into a few lines of possibility—nothing concrete, just a few ideas—he stands, wincing at the disorienting head-pounding shift the motion brings, takes a deep breath, and follows his nose.

A little tricky, as endeavors go, amid all the other smells and the washout-cold and the would-be ache behind his eyes. A little tricky and a lot annoying.

He keeps at it. He wants tea. He is going to get tea.

He is.

He _is_.

-

He finds a crowded little shop in the middle of a narrow street, cluttered with shelves and tables and chairs altogether too large for the space. (Sized for small folk, it seems, though from the outside the building seems just as tall as any others in the city. After a few minutes’ wandering round, stooped over twice as much as usual as he inspects the wares, it occurs to him—there must be a second floor.)

He wanders up to the front desk, after a while. It’s still empty, has been since he walked in, but the sign out front says open, so perhaps if he announces himself…?

There’s a little bell on the counter. Funny shaped, odd. He tilts his head to one side and hears a soft jangling whistle coming from—somewhere, hard to say for certain, but probably from the bell.

He taps it once, braces himself for an overloud chime, or awful crashing sound, or….

None comes. Instead, faint light spills through the cracks round the door behind the counter, gently pulsing.

One beat. Two.

A dragonborn—scrawny, copper, rather impressive head crest—pops their head through, peers at him.

He waves. “Hey. Nice shop you got here. Real cozy. It’s wonderful. Love what you’ve done with the place.”

They snort. Then they sign something he doesn’t quite recognize, rapidfire.

“Oh!” Caduceus smiles. “Sorry,” he signs. “Again please? Slower?”

The dragonborn blinks back, double-lidded, frowning. Then, in what he recognizes belatedly as _Common_ sign, “What?”

“Oh!” Caduceus says again, expression clearing and a smile spreading across his face even as an odd sinking starts in his chest. “Sorry,” he says in Common sign. “I…” He wonders for a moment how to say _assumed_ , then casts it aside. “...think wrong. I use Sylvan sign. I only know a little Common sign.”

 _Use_ is a bit of a misrepresentation these days. He hasn’t had opportunity to use it in—well, in at least twenty seasons now. And _a little_ is a misrepresentation as well, just in the other direction. He knows a handful of words related to burial, grief, and the Wildmother. A handful of basic questions and phrases, like the little script there. The alphabet. (He’s sure he remembers most of that, for all the good it will do him. Even apart from impracticality, he’s never been much one for spelling.)

A curious expression. “Sylvan?”

“Yes. My family uses it.” Oh—and that’s a point, isn’t it? “Sorry. My manners? Gone. My name is C-A-D-U-C-E-U-S.” Pause. “C-L-A-Y. Nice to meet you. This—” He indicates the room. “—is very good.”

“My name is W-R-E-N-L-I-N. Thank you. I—” Something, probably about the shop. Seems like about the shop. Then, before he can ask for clarification, “Your family Deaf?”

“My aunt. Two siblings.” He furrows his brow, fumbling for the right words. There’s a little more to add, it’s a little more nuanced than that, but he isn’t sure how to explain it in _spoken_ Common, much less signed, so he lets it be for now. (A little unhappily—he’d like to share.) “Your family?”

Wrenlin rattles off a response that Caduceus struggles to follow—all Deaf, including their tiny little wife, who is hard of hearing and also the original...something of the—that’s probably _shop_.

The original something of the shop. The original...owner of the shop? Tiny little wife, original owner of the shop. Tiny.

...Oh!

Caduceus nods. Then, because he isn’t sure how to say _Now that makes sense_ , he glances round the room and says, “I understand.”

Wrenlin seems to grasp his meaning, because they nod and smile, obviously amused, then gesture to a chair a bit sympathetically. “You want—?” That’s probably _sit_.

Oh! Of course, a fantastic idea. “Yes, thank you.” He pulls a chair up to the counter, sits. It’s only a little small, and he can meet their eyes without bending so much. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Now—you need what?”

Caduceus hesitates, thrown by the change in topic and the scope of the question, the scope of his answer. There’s a lot he wants to say, several specific varieties he’s looking for, but all he can manage is, “Tea.”

Wrenlin snorts. He half expects to see flames shoot from their nostrils, but there’s nothing, only air, and a look that might be amused or might be annoyed. Hard to say. “What—?” They say something else, but he doesn’t catch it.

“Sorry, I—”

They point to the shelves, and then the countertop. Taps it twice.

Huh?

They point to him, then repeat the gesture.

“...Oh! Of course, thank you.” Caduceus stands, carefully, and goes and collects each of the varieties of tea that caught his eye earlier, and a few more besides, to round out the list inside his head. Then he returns to the counter, sets them down, and contemplates how to ask a question he’s never had cause to ask like this before. He settles for pulling out his coin purse. “What do you need?”

“Sign—” Wrenlin demonstrates.

Caduceus does.

“For this….” A pause. A sign Caduceus does not recognize. A couple of them.

“Sorry. Again?”

They shake their head and pull a small notepad from their pocket. Scribble something down, hold it up.

He squints at the writing, grateful it isn’t cursive. _One silver, nine copper_.

Caduceus counts the coins out carefully and thinks of Caleb. Gets too busy thinking, remembering the neat stacks of coins at the edge of Pumat’s countertop. Loses count. Counts again, hands over the lot.

They scoop it away. “Thank you.”

“Of course, thank _you_. Really good tea. Really good talk.”

“Yes, yes. You must return—” Something or other. Probably _sometime_ , or _soon_ , or something like that. It’s the sort of thing he’d say, if he were a shopowner.

“I hope to.”

“Good, good. See you!”

Caduceus nods, gathers his things, leaves.

Straightens as he crosses through the doorway, and finds his spine protesting. A little too long stooped over, he thinks, even with the chair.

Worth it, though. The quiet in the shop did wonders for his headache. He can make it back through the market without any more incidents now, he’s sure.

-

He’s sure, he’s sure—

-

But he’s wrong.

-

Or. Almost.

-

He makes it back through the market all right, sure, but he gets a bit turned about, so it takes a while and he doesn’t exit the same way he entered, so he’s not entirely sure how to get back to the inn.

So _that_ takes a while too, and he’s not anywhere near all the way there when the sky brightens and the air gets sharp and the streets fill up again, buzzing and thick and altogether too close on either side.

He considers, for a jagged red moment, shouldering the elf in front of him out of his way. It’d be so easy, and so satisfying, and he’d have room to _breathe_ and—

He hunches his shoulders instead (one of them stings, and he realizes he never healed himself, after...well, after _before_ ), ducks his chin down to his chest, makes himself small. Rumbles a quiet _excuse me_ , slides past.

Repeats the process a few minutes later, with a large and very fragrant—it’s lavender, he knows, lavender perfume—half-orc.

And a minute after that, with another elf.

And a minute after that.

And—

-

By the time he makes it through the crowd and back to the inn, his shoulders ache from drawing them in so tight for so long. His head’s started aching, too, all over again from the noise—properly this time, just past pressure into pain. It might get so far as actually pounding, if he doesn’t get to sleep soon.

But the inn is loud, even from outside. Talk and laughter and music. He won’t be able to sleep through it. He doesn’t even want to _walk_ through it, not right now. Not yet.

Just as well. It isn’t time for sleep anyway.

He turns around and goes to seek the Mother.

-

He doesn’t find her.

He doesn’t even find a moment of peace. It’s too bright, even as shadows stretch longer and longer around him.

He pushes himself to his feet, after a while, thanks the Mother for the fresh air, at least, and sets off back to the inn.

It’s a short walk, but it feels long. His shoulders still ache, just a little. His back, too. All the hunching over.

Though, he supposes, trying to fit into a human-sized bed for several nights in a row probably isn’t helping. Maybe he should do something about that.

-

He does something about that.

He stares at his human-sized bed for several long minutes, blinking slow, smiling slower (only because he doesn’t want to frown).

Then he steps forward, crouches down. Feels his smile grow a little more fixed as pain ripples through his skull, rounded and heavy like a big stone boulder rolling past first one way, then the other.

He waits it out, then shifts a little so he’s sitting. (There’s another boulder, then, but it’s a bit smaller.)

He pulls the blankets (too small, too thin, always, and now too rough as well, rasping like a cat’s tongue on the palms of his hands) off the bed. Then the pillows. Then, after a few moments’ thought and a quick trace down the side of the mattress—the sheets as well.

It takes some standing, some bending, some more boulders, some tugging, but he succeeds in the end and has an armful of softer fabric.

He arranges the blankets in a loosely circular nest, then settles the sheets over them, and then sticks the pillows on top.

He glances at Fjord’s bed and thinks, briefly, of stealing his pillows too—

But they’re Fjord’s. It’s Fjord’s bed, Fjord’s pillows, not—

Anyone else’s.

Just Fjord’s.

Of course.

So he leaves them be, and pushes himself upright, and ducks downstairs, steeling himself for noise. (Off day or no, he needs to eat. Life needs things to live, and food is one of them.)

-

He orders a small salad and asks whether it might be all right to eat in his room.

“Knock yourself out,” says the cook. “Just try not to leave a mess for Brondahl.”

“Of course,” he says, wondering who in the world Brondahl is. “I’ll be careful. Thanks.”

On the third stair, he realizes that Brondahl must be someone who cleans the rooms, probably between patrons. He hasn’t run into them yet, he doesn’t think. He hopes he will, before too long—he’d like to say hello and give them his thanks. The room was spotless when he first settled in. (It’s still mostly spotless, now, with Fjord’s jumble gone.) They did a very fine job.

“Brondahl,” he murmurs, committing the name to memory, and keeps walking.

He finishes eating quickly, carries his plate back downstairs, heads back up, and makes tea.

Something new, he thinks. Something new.

So he makes something new—a blend he’s never tried.

It tastes...interesting is probably the best word. He can’t decide if he likes it or not, but he finishes the cup, rinses it carefully, and sets it aside.

Then he regards the blanketnest thoughtfully, for a moment. Needs a heavier quilt. A couple more heavier quilts. More pillows. Bit of moss wouldn’t go amiss.

...But it’s bigger than the bed, and bound to be more comfortable, and that’s the main thing, really.

So he hums, a little, half-tuneless, pulls off his armor, and lowers himself to the nest.

His head protests, pounding harder now than before—two stones rolling past at once, a few pebbles at their heels—but he sighs, and stretches, and worms in, wriggling himself comfortable. (Heals his shoulder, when the blankets scrape against the roughened skin.)

This, he thinks. This is.

This is….

-

Caduceus peels open his eyes. His lashes stick together. He blinks them free, peers round the room.

Dark.

Must be early.

He pushes himself upright gingerly….

Nothing.

Headache is gone.

He smiles, stretches, yawns. Smiles more, gone a little wry. Headache is gone, but his back and shoulders are still a little upset. Ah well. You win some, you lose some, isn’t that how the saying goes?

He stands up, scrubbing his eyes, and yawns again.

Ooh, ow.

Okay, maybe a little more than upset. Or. No, not really. But a little more upset than before, he finds, as he puts his armor back on, walks over to the side of the room, and bends to set up the kettle.

Maybe sleeping on the floor wasn’t such a good idea after all, he muses, as he pours himself a simpler willow bark blend. Wood panels’ve got a bit of a different give than moss-covered stone. And, well, the blankets—

He takes a sip. Too hot, it burns his tongue. But it tastes nice. Better than yesterday’s. And it warms him inside out, and the heat of the cup is nice on his hands.

Very nice.

He finishes the cup, rinses it out in slow, even motions, watching the water swirl and swirl and swirl inside the familiar patterned porcelain, like the little whirlpools he used to make in mud puddles, with long, twiggy sticks.

He swirls the cup one more time, then sets it down on the little bedside table.

Time for breakfast.

-

He grabs a quick bite downstairs—some kind of mush, a little like porridge but finer-grained, with berries scattered on top—and then heads out for a walk.

-

The streets are still quiet, at least the ones that make up his usual circuit. And empty. There’s just himself and the little old dwarf setting up their melon stand, as always, the one who waves at him every morning and smiles from under their thick, scraggly eyebrows and thicker, scragglier beard.

The dwarf waves as Caduceus passes. Caduceus waves back.

He really should stop and talk to them one of these days. Ask their name. Maybe buy a melon or two. Or three. (He’s not sure how much melons are, but he’s got a lot of mouths to feed. Or—a lot of mouths he _could_ feed. Intends to feed, at some point. Whenever they’re all in the same place for more than a minute. And isn’t that the story of his—)

He can stop and talk to them now, he thinks, as he ambles by. He can. He can, and—why not?

So he goes and talks to them.

“Hey,” he says, with his best friendly wave. “I’ve seen you round a few times. My name is Caduceus, Caduceus Clay.”

“Caduceus,” the dwarf says, in a rounder, louder voice than he’s expecting. “Nice to formally meet you. I’m Folsun. Folsun Throshvel.”

“Lovely to meet you too, uh—” He glances at their beard, counts the beads in the braids. Counts one more time to be sure. “—Miss Throshvel.”

“That’s right,” she says. “And thank you for checking. Not everyone in these parts is so courteous. Don’t know to look.” She gives him a _what-can-you-do_ sort of look, not quite a scowl, not quite an eyeroll, not quite a smile. More of a wry eyebrow and a shrug. Then, “You spend a lot of time with dwarvish folk?”

“Ah,” he says, grinning. “Well. A _couple_ dwarvish folk, yeah. A few others over the years, of course, some families passing through. But, uh, mostly just the two.”

“I see,” Miss Throshvel says. “Well. They taught you manners at least…?”

Caduceus waits for her to finish her sentence, because it seems like there’s something else she wants to say, but she just looks at him expectantly. “Sure did,” he says, a little confused. This kind of pause would make sense if she were waiting for his name, but he’s already told her his name so that doesn’t make sense? So what does she…?

“Oh!” he says. “Ah, that’d be Mister. Mister Clay.” Though _Miss_ wouldn’t go too far amiss either, he supposes. (Heh. _Miss_ wouldn’t go _amiss_. That’s nice. He should remember that. Clarabelle would get—)

But he’s less used to it, so Mister is simpler. So here he is.

“—need today, Mister Clay? Or did you just want to say hello?”

“Ahh, well, I mostly wanted to say hello, learn your name if possible, but I _was_ also interested in these.” He gestures to the produce behind her.

A wide grin spreads across her face. “Wonderful, wonderful. Well? How many you wanting?”

“Oh, ah…” That is a question, isn’t it? He never did quite decide, he just sort of...walked over. “...How much for two?”

“Big or little.”

“Big,” he says on autopilot. Then remembers that there aren’t very many mouths to feed and he doesn’t really have anywhere to store the melons besides his room. “Or,” he adds, as she turns round. “One big, one small.”

“Okay, one moment.” She selects two, holds them up. “How’s these?”

“Oh sure.” He smiles. “Those’ll do just fine.”

“That’ll be a silver, then.”

He fishes a silver out of his pocket, sets it down. Takes both melons with a grin. “Thank you. These’ll be great with dinner. Something sweet.”

She smiles, and it’s fake. “If sweet’s what you’re after, we should have some winter berries in soon.”

“We?”

“My girlfriend and I,” she says, a little pointedly. (A little sharply, even. Why…?) “I’m the face, she’s the green thumb.”

“Ahh. That’s nice,” Caduceus says. “My compliments to her, these look wonderful.”

The flatness falls out of her smile, the sharpness out of her voice. “I’ll be sure to pass it along. Although, you drop by later in the week, you may see her yourself. Setting up a secondary stand, just for a few days. What with the berries.”

“Oh, how lovely! I’ll have to drop by.”

“Please do.”

“I will,” he says, already planning a few new berry-based meals. (Fresh ones for porridge, sure, a few on the side with salads...maybe a fruit salad, if he can rustle up a few things besides them and these melons? A smoothie or two, a...well, he doesn’t have the resources for a few jars of jam, or any of the more elaborate desserts, but surely if he asks nicely he can get access to the kitchens again, and if he does….)

Miss Throshvel’s voice cuts through his musing, scattering visuals like smoke. “Will that be all for today?”

He blinks. “Oh. Ah, I think so? Just about, yeah.”

“All right. You have a good day now, Mister Clay.”

“Thank you. You too.”

“Of course.”

He dips his head and takes his leave, finishing the rest of his walk with a melon under each arm.

What a nice woman.

-

He heads back to the inn just long enough to drop off the melons.

Or, well, he _means_ to, but he gets distracted talking to the kitchen staff. The assistant cook—Lawry, it turns out his name is, nice young man, much less brusque than the head cook—asks where he got the melons from, and Caduceus tells him about the little stand, and then about the berries they’re going to have in soon, and then his ideas for recipes….

And then they’re swapping ideas, and swapping recipes, and talking about flavors and methods and loosely planning a collaboration—

And then the head cook snaps at Lawry to get back to work, and Lawry gives Caduceus an apologetic smile, and scurries off back to the kitchen.

Well, Caduceus thinks. Well.

That was...well, the interruption wasn’t very nice, and he feels a little bad for keeping Lawry so long, if that’s what happens when he’s idle—but theconversation was nice.

Very nice.

Maybe he’ll manage to catch him again sometime. Hopefully after his work hours. Some of those ideas were very—

He yawns.

—very intriguing. Creative. Definitely wanna follow up on them. Definitely, definitely.

But first….

He needs to put these melons away.

-

He heads out again, after a while.

Wanders aimlessly, at first. Nothing in particular needs doing, no one in particular needs helping. He has food, he has tea, he has open skies above and wind in his hair and people to talk to.

So many people.

It’s. It’s pretty nice. It’s been a bit.

He’s been saying that a lot lately. But then, he supposes. It’s been a bit for a lot of things.

Not really the point, though. Point is it’s nice. The people, the talking, the slow morning crawl, the sun rising soft over the buildings.

Nice, great, wonderful—

-

Until it isn’t.

-

The deep blue sky grows lighter by increments, too slow to track, too slow to measure. (Though one or two of his siblings would certainly try, sketching with colored inks all morning long, mixing to get just the right shades, pages of skylines spread out side-by-side for comparison—)

Caduceus watches it, for a while, just standing against a wall and gazing up at the endless blue until it expands further backward and presses down on him at the same time, pulling and pushing and neither all at once, and dizziness sweeps over him and he looks back down at the cobblestones beneath his feet.

He wonders, vaguely, as he traces their irregular shapes with his eyes, if that’s what drowning feels like.

Probably not. That’s what _vertigo_ feels like. Well, sort of. A little. It’s been a while since he had a spell like that, just looking at the sky. Forty seasons? Fifty? Hard to say.

He traces a handful more stones, and chances a look up. Fleeting, at first. Then longer, lingering.

Nothing happens.

He sighs happily, rolling his twingey shoulders, and moves on.

-

The sky continues to lighten by increments, as skies are wont to do in most places. Slowly, slowly—and then all at once.

Caduceus looks up from the little stall he’s stopped by, with its wood-carved jewelry and lovely conversationalist of a salesman (Mister Friedrichs, swell guy, sold him a new whetstone and started chatting about the trade), and finds the clouds have shifted and the sun is out and more white than yellow and not so much shining as blaring and he winces.

Looks back down, blinking rapidly. Blue-and-purple color-spots everywhere. Drifting along as he looks from the ground to a nearby building to his own hands. To his own hands. To his own hands.

To his own hands, underlit with blues and scattered on the backsides with impossibly vibrant pink. The world around them cherry-bright.

His heart spikes in his chest, and the world goes brighter, closer—

He closes his eyes, takes a breath. Another.

Opens them again, and there are color-spots, still, and a bright yellow cast over everything—but the world is sensibly-hued again. For now, anyway.

He blinks a few more times, until the spots vanish, and then smiles down at Mister Friedrichs, an apology for the break in their discussion on the tip of his tongue—but it withers in seconds, because….

Oh. 

Confusion rests in his bushy eyebrows, and concern gathers in the lines round his downturned mouth.

“Sun in my eyes,” Caduceus says, by way of explanation.

“Ahh.” Mister Friedrichs nods, expression partially clearing. “Yeah, that’ll do it. Best avoid staring straight at it, hm? Melt your eyes that way. Or wear ’em out so bad you need a pair of these.” He jiggles his glasses, and Caduceus notes, not for the first time, how very thick the lenses are.

“Is that why you—?”

“Heavens, no.” He laughs. “Born like this, I was. Though reading so many books in the dark probably didn’t help.”

Caduceus nods. Thinks of his older siblings. (Of one in particular, of Light cantrips flashing on in the dead of night and waking Caduceus out of deader sleep. Of chucking pillows across the room. The light stuttering, winking out—returning with a vengeance the moment he closes his eyes again. Of conversations and compromise, of blankets tossed over the divine-lit object, of still waking out of dead sleeps and still chucking pillows—but only sometimes, only sometimes. Of waking some nights to no light at all but the sound of turning pages, and sleepily casting Light himself before shoving a pillow over his head, because he wouldn’t fall back to sleep for a while anyway. Of soft humming in the half-dark, of….)

“Son?”

Caduceus blinks. “Sorry?”

“There you are.”

He blinks again, bemused. “Did I go somewhere?”

“You tell me. Looked a little lost, there, for a moment.”

“Oh.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.” But now that he asks, Caduceus’s chest is a little tight. His throat, too. And his eyes are a little hot. (And there were the color-patches, and there’s still the yellow cast, and his heart still hasn’t quite slowed to its usual rhythm, and—) “Just the sun,” he says, glancing up and back down, and pulling up a smile easy as tubers in a well-watered patch. “It’s a bit much for me today, I’m afraid.”

“Ahhh.” Mister Friedrichs nods again, once, twice, three times, and every solemn bob of his head is a lie. He doesn’t believe a word Caduceus is saying.

That rankles, a bit. Like a burr caught deep in his hair, scraping the back of his neck every time he turns it just so, when he can’t tell which way _just so_ is. Because he’s _not_ lying, and he doesn’t know what he’s done to give that impression. Part of him wants to ask, so he can be sure not to do it again in the future. A very large part of him. Instead, he says, shrugging, “Happens sometimes.”

Mister Friedrichs nods again. “You know what you should do?”

“What’s that?”

“You should buy a _big_ hat. Nice brim to block out the sun. It’s what my friend does. Works wonders, she says.”

“Wonders, huh.”

“That’s right. Although, if you can swing it, she’s also got these glasses? Yellow and all. Makes her look a bit like a bug, but she says they make the light softer.”

“Softer,” Caduceus repeats, his ears twitching. Like a bug? Now that’s interesting…. “Sounds great.” He’s never worn glasses before, though, and doubts they make any designed for firbolg ears (or noses) in this city. The frames would need to be custom-made, and that would take time, and Caduceus doesn’t want to wait for a solution to the whole sun problem. He wants one _now_.

And on that note….

“I think the hat’s better for me, though.” Easier to manage. Just have to cut some ear holes, at most. “Yeah. Hat sounds nice. Any idea where I can find one?”

“Ahhhh,” Mister Friedrichs says again. “Not sure. There’s a clothes shop two lefts away, thatways, third door down. Never looked for hats there, but could be. Or you could check nearer the Tri-Spires? I know there’s a junk place there fixes up and resells all kinds of things. Seen a hat or two patched nice in my day.”

“Yeah?” That pings something in Caduceus’s head. What is it. What _is_ it.

“Funny halfling fellow. Artist, I think? Or is that the husband. I forget. It’s been a while.”

 _Oh_ , that’s what it is. “Wouldn’t happen to be a Mister, uh…” He scrunches his face a little. Elmtree? No. Elmwood? ...No. “...Mister Elkwood, would it?”

“ _That’s_ the one! I take it you’ve been?”

“Yeah. We had a nice conversation the other day, he sold me some teacups. Didn’t see any hats, though.”

“Shame,” Mister Friedrichs says. “Well, you never know, he might have got one in since. Never hurts to take a look.”

“That’s true,” Caduceus says. “I may have to. And it’d be nice to say hello.”

“Sure, sure. Well, you best be off, then?”

“I suppose.”

“You wanting anything else before you go?”

“Ah…” Caduceus considers, squinting. “...No, I think this’ll suit just fine.” He pats his pocket, where the new whetstone lies.

“Okay, okay,” Mister Friedrichs says. “Be seeing you, then! Be sure to drop by if you need another, or just want to talk shop!”

“I’ll do that,” Caduceus says. “Thank you. Have a wonderful day.”

“You too!”

Caduceus smiles, turns to go, and waves over his shoulder.

Nice guy.

-

The sun gets brighter as he turns the first corner. Shines more directly in his eyes. He resists the urge to scrub at them.

Caduceus walks a little faster. The sooner he finds a hat, the better.

-

There’s two hats in the clothes shop, but they’re thin-brimmed, not very useful for his purposes.

Aside from that, not much around, just a lot of old coats and trousers and half-pressed shirts, musty and terrible.

He tries not to wrinkle his nose too obviously and leaves.

-

There’s no hat in Mister Elkwood’s shop either. Just a lot of knickknacks and another little box that needs disenchanting.

Caduceus has the spell again today, so he disenchants it.

Mister Elkwood cackles delightedly, swipes the lid clear to reveal a rather marvelous engraving, opens it, and tells Caduceus to look about the shop, pick something out.

He’s about to refuse when his gaze falls on what looks to be a dented recorder, painted in blues and greens and grays, with flecks of white like stars.

He walks over to it, trails a hand over the side, not quite touching. (Manners.)

Remembers warm mornings in the kitchen, music streaming in from the window, out-of-tune. Remembers warm afternoons among the graves, music curling round them almost visible—actually visible, for Colton. A myriad of colors, but mostly, the day they built the second wall—mostly blue and gray and green. Scattered with yellow like stardust.

This isn’t...quite the same. White in place of yellow, primarily blue, hardly any green. But it’s….

Well, it’s beautiful. It can’t just sit here unplayed. Worse, unplayable.

Caduceus drops his hand to his side, turns back around. “How much is this one?”

“Sorry?”

“This one,” he says, louder, and feels as though he’s shouting past stone. He must be hardly louder than a whisper, though, because Mister Elkwood leans in to listen. “How much?”

“Ah, that one. Well, I must warn you it doesn’t work, so—”

“I don’t mind.” He tries for firm, assuring. His voice spills out of him too-loud and too-big and so soft Mister Elkwood’s brow furrows a little deeper for a moment before smoothing out.

“...For you,” he says, gesturing to the shelf. “Free.”

Caduceus shakes his head. “Last time we—”

“Last time you wanted some _very_ expensive enchanted teacups. This time you want a broken recorder my husband pawned off an old geezer and painted nice. It’s worth a few copper at most. You’ve more than earned it.”

“Mm.” ( _If you don’t have anything kind to say_ , Caduceus’s father says, inside his head.) ( _If you have something useful to say_ , Auntie Corrin says, over the top, but Caduceus isn’t sure how to make his response both useful and kind, so….) “I see.”

“Yeah. And besides,” Mister Elkwood says, softer. “It’s sat there for months. Could use a good home.”

Something small breaks over Caduceus’s shoulders, and he nods. “...Yeah. Yeah, it could.” He takes the recorder, slips it in a pocket. “Thank you.”

“Of course, of course, thank _you_. Will that be all for today?”

He pulls up words by the roots. “I think so, yeah.” A thought occurs to him. He pulls up more. “Unless you know where to find a decent hat? Something big and floppy. Like a….” What’s the word? What’s...? It’s. Something with S. Thing. Warm, wide brim, floppy, often made of straw? Keeps the sun out of your—ohh, right. “Sun-hat.”

“Oh! Now _that_ I can help you with! Listen up now—” And he spills a stream of directions that makes Caduceus’s head spin.

“I’m sorry, can I get that one more time please? A little slower?”

He repeats it slower, and Caduceus simplifies it further and memorizes the simplification as best he can, repeating it in his head over and over and over.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime!”

Caduceus dips his head and leaves with the directions still on loop.

-

He does not go straight to the shop.

He pauses a few streets away, sits down on a small stone bench, knees up in front of his chest again by default, and pulls out the recorder.

He stares at it for a long, long moment. Then he tucks it back in his pocket, because it doesn’t feel right, not just yet. This isn’t the time, or the place. He’ll wait. Cast Mending tonight, maybe, or tomorrow.

Maybe try a tune, after. (He’s never been particularly musical, but he remembers one or two. Well, loosely. He can try to work out the missing notes. And if he doesn’t manage—well. Probably it’ll still be pretty, even if it isn’t quite right. That’s something.)

So…yeah. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, for sure.

For now, though….

He stands, wincing as his bones creak, and squints as the sun drifts out from behind a cloud.

For now….

Hat.

…What were those directions again?

-

He makes it to the shop, after a fashion.

Steps through the door with a greeting on his tongue. It dies away as he moves forward, into the dim room, and the door closes behind him.

It’s almost totally dark, lit only by soft candles in sconces along the walls.

How...?

A glance around.

Ah.

Coverings over the windows. He steps close to inspect them, squinting.

Tapestries. Very old, very well-cared-for, very intricate. There’s a story there, he thinks, in the weave and in the keeping.

His fingers itch to brush over the threads, to discover—silky or rough? To trace the patterns, try to uncover some of the stories.

He keeps his hands on his staff. This isn’t his mother’s quilt. The history isn’t his. He does not have permission. He keeps his hands on his staff, and traces the shelf lichen just below the base of the crystal, for a moment. He thinks of fraying stitchwork, carefully reinforced.

(Would that the quilt had fit in his bags. Would that the road had been safe for such a masterwork. His sleeping furs are suitable and comfortable and he is content with them, but they have no panels to trace, no stitching filled with stories, no real breadth, no—they’re not the same.)

(That’s okay, of course. It’s just after twenty-odd seasons of long evenings with a particular blanket in your lap, you grow a little accustomed to its weight.)

“Welcome.”

He turns. Blinks, and a hazy shape across the way resolves itself into an elf behind a stone counter.

“Hey,” he says. “Great place you’ve got here. Really nice atmosphere.”

The elf smiles. “Thank you. I’m fond of it myself.” They sound a little amused. “I’m Miss Felda, I’m the proprietor here. Is there something I can help you with?”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Miss Felda. I’m Caduceus, Caduceus Clay. And, ah, I’m certainly hoping you can help me with something, yeah.”

“And what would that be?”

“Well,” he says. “I, uh…” He squints again, peering round the room. A few shelves, between the sconces. A few racks in the corners. A few tables. A number of piles and hanging things on the lot of them, some easier to make out than others. Most are lumps of shadow, from where he stands, save for a few scarves and a few stacks of what may or may not be shirts. “Forgive me if I’m asking a rather obvious question, but you wouldn’t happen to have any, uhhh….” What’s the word again? “...Sun-hats, would you?”

“Sun-hats….” Slight shifting, and then she raises her arm. “Over there.”

Caduceus squints in the general direction they’re pointing. “Wonderful, thank you.” He makes his way over slowly, trying not to bump into any table-corners. Trails his hands over the sides as he passes.

“If you need, you can take one of the candles. I trust you can reach?”

He laughs. “I can, yeah. Thank you. That’s very helpful.” He walks over to the nearest candle and lifts it gently from the wall, sconce and all. (Thank goodness. For a moment he worried he might have to touch the wax itself. Less than ideal. It’s terribly sticky, sometimes sticks to the fine fuzz on the backs of his fingers, and when that happens it takes a very long time to get it out.)

Then he walks carefully back to the space he just left, trying not to stare directly into the candlelight. (It won’t do to get distracted by the flicker. Also, the soft glow is nice, but the bright flame is a bit much head-on. Or, well. It probably is, it seems that kind of day. But he hasn’t actually looked to check, yet. And doesn’t plan to.)

He glances round, instead, searching for hats. Shirts there, scarves there, some dresses, trousers—oh, pre-sewn alterations for tails, that’s so nice! Not everyone is so thoughtful, that’s really—

Oh, hats!

He ambles over, bends down a bit. (His back protests, faintly.) Three hats. One with a little brim, two with larger ones. Of those two, one dark, one light. He hovers one hand over the darker of the two, curious, then glances up. “May I…?”

“Of course, feel free. Mind that candle, though.” A little sharp on that last sentence.

“Of course.” Caduceus quickly rights the candle, which has, he now realizes, been leaning too far down. “Oh dear. Uh, my apologies.” He holds it closer to his chest, blinking uncomfortably over the top of it (not so much too bright, it turns out, as too _flickery_ ), and peers down at the hats again. Traces the brim of the dark one for a split second—freezes.

One beat. Two. (Don’t be rude.)

He pulls his hand back slowly. (Don’t be rude.)

He does not wipe the...interesting texture off on his trousers. (Don’t be rude.)

He traces the brim of the lighter hat instead, and finds that it is—to his immense relief—only plain straw.

Plain straw, with a ribbon round the middle. (Not purple, like Auntie Corrin’s, but a nice soft blue. Close enough, he thinks.)

His throat aches sharply, for a moment. He clears it. Blinks pinprick heat from his still-aching eyes, and lowers the candle to the table. (It doesn’t help.)

“This,” he says, and his voice threatens to catch. He runs a thumb over the ribbon. Silk, not cotton. Not remotely like cotton. That’s better, he thinks. (That’s worse.) “This is really nice,” he says, clearer. “Love the ribbon, it’s a great touch.”

“Thank you. It was my own addition. That will be…” A pause. “...four copper.”

“Of course, let me just—” Caduceus picks up the candle again and puts it back on the wall, then moves over to the counter, feeling for coins as he goes. “There you are.”

“Thank you very much. Would you like a box?”

“Oh, ah….” _Would_ he like a box? “No, thank you. I was just gonna wear this.”

“Very well. Is there anything else you require?"

“Ahh…” He considers asking about the tapestries, about how old they are, their origins. But he gets the sense, the longer he pauses, that he’s perhaps overstaying his welcome. “...Not today, I don’t think, no. I’ll have to come back some other time though, this really is lovely.” He gestures round the room.

“Please do.”

“Oh, I will.” He nods and turns to go. “May the—” He is not in the grove. He cannot use that farewell here. “Ah.” He has the sudden, vivid impression of a cold bowl of porridge. Smiles warm and sunny. “May the gods be with you.”

If she notices his slip-up, she doesn’t comment. “And you as well.”

He nods, places the hat on his head, and leaves.

-

Sunrays accost him the moment he steps out from under the little awning into the open street. His eyes _hurt_. His head too. He didn’t realize it stopped, but it must have, for here it is again, sudden and surprising like a...a...like something surprising, he supposes. And sudden. (Though really all surprises are sudden, aren’t they, now he thinks about it, just by definition. Hard for something to surprise you if it isn’t at least a little bit sudden already.)

...Where was he?

Oh right. Being attacked by sunlight. Flash-bright, abrasive.

He blinks a little, and then a lot, and pulls the hat down further. It helps, some. Provides a little shade, just like Mister—Mister…?

He frowns, slow. It pulls at his temples uncomfortably. (More muscles to frown, he thinks vaguely.)

Mister….

...Wrinkles, bushy white eyebrows, thinning hair. Sharp wits, kind eyes, a rough-soft sort of name to match. Sounded the way Mister Caleb sounds, only booming instead of half a whisper. Mister…?

Just like Mister….

Just like the old man said.

He walks on. (It’ll come to him. And if it doesn’t, well, he can always just ask, the next time he sees him.)

-

The ground squishes underfoot. The ice has melted, so now there’s mud. (Nice, he thinks, and imagines his eldest sibling crouched on the little paving-stone across the way, keeping the mud from their long coat and the squish from their skin.)

He considers, for a split second, sitting on the paving-stone himself.

Dismisses the thought and slides to the ground. Mud squishes beneath him.

He focuses on it, and the chill, the light breeze picking up. Tries to slip away on it, away from the renewed pressure in his head, away—off to the Wildmother. Tries to feel for her.

It works, a little. The pressure fades.

But all he really feels, a misty span of time later, is tired. Tired and wind-lashed, as the breeze tosses and tangles his hair.

He should really braid it tomorrow. (He thinks of bony hands separating it into sections, threading vines through, careful to keep claws from catching, and swallows past a sharp ache in his throat.)

Caduceus stands, bracing himself with his staff sunk deep in the mud. Pale sunlight glints off the crystal at its top, shines on the lichen, illuminates the shimmering back of a beetle—the many-times descendant of one of the beetles one of his siblings helped coax into the knots in the wood. (He blinks through the flash.)

His knee screams at him, as he pulls himself upright. Screams more as he walks back to the Leaky Tap.

-

The Leaky Tap is near-empty.

There is one person at a table, and no one at the bar save Mister Wessek.

And Caduceus.

He is tempted for a moment to take a table, but then the door opens and two rowdy dwarves walk in and he thinks of the time he spent two weeks with beads in his beard and it occurs to him that he is rather tired, and very thirsty. All that walking, and he hasn’t had a drop to drink all day.

So he goes to the bar, asks for water. Ends up talking to Mister Wessek off and on as he drinks it, slow. Learns a few things, like that he’s worked here a good while, and likes a slow evening, and thinks tea is okay, and doesn’t like to talk about himself. He prefers to talk about patrons, when he talks at all. (He hasn’t said so, of course, but he’s given nothing but politely vague non-responses for the entire ten minutes they’ve been making conversation, and has begun deflecting questions back, and Caduceus can put two and two together.)

After another five minutes to wrap up his own vagueries, Caduceus thanks him for the drink and takes his leave, hiding a wince as he stands. He adjusts his hold on his staff, nods pleasantly at Wessek, and braces himself for the stairs.

-

He sets his new hat on the bed, and the recorder beside it, and then turns to make tea.

First the stones, then the stand, then water in the kettle and water on the stand, and then tapping the stones with the crystal. And then waiting.

He rearranges the nest on the floor until the kettle is ready, and then selects one of Wrenlin’s teas and sets it to steep. And then there’s more waiting.

Caduceus sheds his armor, for lack of anything else to do, and sets it neatly by the wall. The usual small clink seems smaller than usual, and for a moment he thinks he must have missed a piece...but no, he hasn’t. Okay, then. Good. He’s not sure what he’d do if he lost a shoulder-plate somewhere. He’s pretty sure giant beetles aren’t native to Zadash, and even if they were—

Caduceus glances at the kettle, but the tea’s not ready yet. So he glances about the room instead. Surely there must be something left to fill the time? Choosing a cup, maybe…?

He walks over to his pack to select one and his gaze catches on the recorder, still lying on the bed.

He moves over to the bed, feeling curiously as though he’s wading through water. He sits down cross-legged, clumsy. He picks up the instrument, clumsier.

It’s light. Lighter than Colton’s, maybe. (The last time Caduceus dared snag it, it was faintly heavy, like a flat stone, like a skipping rock, and for a brief, sharp moment he thought about—)

Caduceus turns the recorder over in his hands. And again, slower. And again. It’s light as...as Nicodranas driftwood. But it doesn’t smell of salt. It doesn’t smell of anything. Not even paint.

He continues turning it round. Over and over and over.

Some time later, Caduceus becomes aware that his feet are asleep. And his knees hurt.

He pulls his legs out from under himself, which hurts worse, and then grabs his staff and leans on it as he stands. He waits until he can feel his feet again, and then walks over to pick out a cup and pour the tea.

He’s sat on the floor, halfway to taking a sip when it occurs to him that he hasn’t asked the others if they’d like to join him. So he stands again, goes out to the hall, and knocks on each door.

Jester and Beau’s room first. No one answers.

Nott and Caleb’s next. There’s a clatter, a curse, and then shuffling and the door opens and there’s Nott.

“What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you’d like some tea. I’ve just made….” He gestures over his shoulder.

“Oh, ah….” Nott glances uncertainly over her shoulder.

Ahh. She’s busy. “That’s okay,” Caduceus says. “I’ll let you get back to it. My door’s open if you you want any later, though.”

“Thank you Mister Clay,” she says in a rush, and shuts the door.

Caduceus blinks at it for a moment, then shakes his head and goes back to his room. Sits down. Picks up his tea again. (Not piping hot, but softly warm. It’s nice.)

He takes a sip. He makes a face, because there’s no one round to see him.

Well. It’s for the best, then, that everyone was busy. He would’ve been terribly embarrassed to serve something so oversteeped. (At least, to do so without meaning to. When there’s a measure of intent involved, of course, that’s—)

Caduceus drinks the rest of the tea. It’s lukewarm and too-bitter and he wants rather desperately to spit it out, but he drinks it.

When he’s finished, the cup trembles in his hands. He puts it down before he can drop it, and curls his hands into loose fists, rests them on his knees.

He closes his eyes. Takes a breath. Listens to the stillness. Takes another breath. Imagines wind blowing soft through his hair. Takes another breath.

Opens his eyes. Uncurls his hands, slowly, and finds that while they’re a little sweaty, they don’t shake.

Good.

He stands, gathers everything up, cleans it methodically, and puts it all away. Through it all, his knees ache, the left more than the right. Vaguely, he knows that this means something, should mean something, but all he can think of is shouting.

More meditation may be a good idea. Clear his mind, some. Trust in the Mother.

But Caduceus is very tired.

He stands there for several minutes, still, deliberating. He goes to sit down among the blankets, and the cold fabric brushes against his ankle, rough, almost burning. He thinks of tapestries and quilts, and the wave of exhaustion that sweeps over him is so heavy he folds under it. Lays all the way down, closes his eyes, and sleeps.

-

He wakes, in the middle of the night, to ringing silence and all the blankets kicked far away.

He pulls them back, and then stares at the ceiling for a long while before, finally, drifting off again.

-

Caduceus wakes to ringing silence and an aching skull.

He goes for a walk to fix both, donning his hat in case the walk gets a little longer than he intends. (And he has a feeling it might, today.) He doesn’t want a repeat of yesterday, with the sun all in his eyes and the sky so very far away and himself about to fall right into it.

A few steps in, Caduceus discovers he needn’t have worried. The ground is damp in a way that suggests it’s been raining, and the sky is overcast in a way that suggests it will again soon. (Oh, he thinks, remembering his knees. Oh, of course.)

And sure enough, after a few minutes, it starts sprinkling. He takes off his hat, tips his face to the sky. The motion hurts, but the cool, fresh air...well, that’s a blessing.

Caduceus walks a little slower, drinks it all in. Finds a spring in his step, even with the snail’s pace. A sense of lightness, rightness. (This is how things are meant to be. This is what he’s meant to do today. This is _nice_.)

Before long, the sprinkling turns to drizzling, and then pouring, and Caduceus reluctantly puts his hat back on. The rain is still nice, very nice, but he won’t want to bother drying his hair when he gets back to the inn, and it will be awful to comb through later if he doesn’t. Best avoid the problem.

When he rounds out his usual walk, he turns to give Miss Throshvel a commiserating glance, but—

She’s not there. The whole cart is gone, the usual space glaringly empty. For one juddering heartbeat he wonders if something’s happened—

And then a raindrop lands on one of his ears and he exhales, shaking his head at himself.

Of course, he thinks, as he walks on. She probably needed to find a new alcove. Can’t very well keep the produce dry in this downpour, and it can’t be very easy to get customers either.

He hopes, briefly, that her search has gone well. And then he thinks of other things, and continues his walk.

Time passes.

He doesn’t know how much of it, exactly, just that he makes four (at least, he thinks four; he sort of loses count) more of his usual loop before the swelling in his chest fades and the cold goes from bracing to making his teeth chatter every so often.

He makes one more, purely out of spite, and then goes back to the inn.

-

Caduceus stands under the eaves and wrings out his hair and sleeve as best as he’s able, before he steps inside. It makes the headache worse, what with all the tilting and looking down involved, but it’s worth it, he thinks. Less mess for...for….? Drondah? Deirdre? Something with D, he thinks, maybe. The person who does the cleaning.

Less mess, more polite.

So he does it anyway, and then shakes out his hands, and scrapes his boots on the mat, and steps inside.

-

Caduceus is halfway up the stairs when he remembers—

 _Brondahl_.

He offers a silent apology, and commits the name more firmly to memory. (Brondahl.)

-

Caduceus doesn’t want to dry his hair, but he does it anyway, requisitioning the cleanest of his travel furs for the task.

Then he makes tea, because it’s time for that and because he still hasn’t stopped shivering, even stripped of his dripping armor.

It tastes okay, not oversteeped this time, but it’s missing something. What is it? Ginger, maybe? Some chamomile?

...No, he thinks. No. It’s missing something else. He just can’t quite lay a finger on what.

He leaves the tea to cool a bit and goes downstairs for a quick breakfast.

-

Eating takes a little longer than he expects, so the tea is lukewarm when he returns.

He drinks it anyway, and when it’s gone and all that remains are bitter dregs, he knows.

Honey. He wants honey.

He knows he didn’t bring any honeycomb with him, but gives into the urge to rifle through his pack anyway. He finds a lot of things, some he’s even almost forgotten about, including a very old twig, stripped bare. He tucks that carefully back into its inside pocket and stands again, bracing himself against the wall.

Maybe Caleb will be willing to spare some. Caduceus has seen honey among the components Caleb takes, sometimes, and lays out in front of himself at night, arranging and rearranging in patterns Caduceus can always follow but cannot reliably understand the reasoning behind. It’s possible that he will say no, of course, he’s rather protective of his components….

But there’s little harm in asking.

-

No one answers when he knocks on the door.

Ah, he thinks. At the library again, probably. Okay.

-

Caduceus goes shopping again. It’s not raining when he steps out the door, but the sky’s still overcast, and his knee still aches, so he puts his hat on anyway.

It sprinkles off and on as he wanders the streets, occasionally asking directions, occasionally just standing and staring up at the wide, gray sky until it grows too wide. And, occasionally, stroking a thumb over one of the more twisted knots in his staff, when the crowd swells and the rumble-jumble of chatter swells with it.

It helps, some.

Keeps him centered, keeps him in his body and on his feet long enough to find a shop that actually sells honey and not just sugar or molasses.

The one he finds doesn’t sell either of those, but does sell flower seeds and teas and little handicrafts alongside the honey. Little bits of embroidery and crochet, mostly, and on any other day Caduceus would love to talk about them at length, but the staff’s only helped so much. He’s still worn down from all the walking and the getting lost and the noise. So he settles, instead, for a short compliment to his favorite piece, the beauty of the pattern on the border of the soft green tea cosy.

He’s prepared to leave it at that, but the elf behind the counter lights up, starts explaining how they managed it, and the tiefling beside them looks on with eyes soft as sheep’s wool and Caduceus thinks of conversations about music, and languages, and codes, and smithing, and goats, and a dozen other things, and he cannot bring himself to walk away.

So he asks more questions, instead. What kind of fiber is it, and where did they get their materials, and how long have they been the learning the craft? And they answer, and he listens and smiles and nods, and tells them how wonderful it is. They agree, and say they just wish they’d learned earlier, years ago, can’t believe they’ve been missing out, imagine how much more they might know now if only, if only….

“It’s never too late to learn something,” Caduceus says, and it feels like his throat is trying to close (Like his very flesh knows the words are stolen.) “I’m...mm, I’m glad you gave this a try. It suits you. And now this—” He gestures to the tea cosy. “—is here, and….” He pauses, mulling over the words, trying to make them his own. Then he gives up. “...it wasn’t before. That’s nice.”

The elf beams.

There’s a little more talk, after that, but not much. Caduceus hums his way through most of it, taking care to use the right tones, so he doesn’t sound flat or bored. (He isn’t. What they’re telling him genuinely is very interesting, and they seem very nice. It’s just...been a long morning. And he’s been standing for quite a while, now, and his knees aren’t very happy with him.)

Caduceus reaches for the honey, when the conversation seems wrapped up, and then pauses. “Sorry,” he says, a little rueful. “How much is this, again?”

The elf waves off the apology and gives him a number, and Caduceus has the fuzzy sense that it’s probably smaller than the first one they gave him. Probably.

He leaves a tip to make up for it, and a smile that feels not quite wide enough, so he crinkles his eyes extra to make up for that, too.

And then turns and wanders off, honey tucked in his pocket.

-

The walk back to the inn is long. It starts pouring again before he’s more than halfway there.

The streets empty out, which is a relief for all of ten minutes before it’s only very wet and very quiet. And then the sky begins to flash with lightning and the air to rumble with thunder and it’s not even always quiet.

It’s just wet. Cold, too, as the wind picks up.

Caduceus’s chest grows tight, the further he walks. He isn’t sure why, only that it’s not the storm, because thunder and lightning have never bothered him. They’re just part of nature, and there’s a beauty to them, besides.

Maybe he’s just that tired, he thinks. It would make sense. The headache has been easing and worsening all day, and it’s been growing steadily worse since the storm began. (And oh, huh, maybe _that_ one’s the thunder, yeah. That’s almost funny, except laughing makes his head pound.) And his knees haven’t stopped aching. And he’s wading through water again, except maybe it’s molasses this time. And he’s so tired.

Out of spells, he thinks, vaguely, though he actually has all of them left, still. And feels himself lose another. (Though he still has all of them left, and Clarabelle would—would—)

“Dry off first,” he says to himself, quietly. “No, change clothes first. No. Strip, then dry off, then change clothes. Then make tea. Then eat. Then sleep. Then maybe when you wake up….”

-

Caduceus tries to squeeze himself dray again as best he can before ducking inside. Then throws his meticulously crafted plan out the window because he wants tea more than he wants to be dry.

So he sets up the kettle, and then he strips and dries himself and changes into his single set of spare clothes. Then sets the tea to steep.

Then sits down with his back to the bed and listens to the sound of rain on the rooftop. The smell of it, still, in his damp hair. The smell of the tea. The visions of puddles on the street, hovering behind his eyes.

He seeks the Wildmother in all of them, and finds only silence. The message is still patience, then. Still faith. Okay.

Caduceus opens his eyes, drinks his tea, and goes back to searching, a little more passively.

He waits, still holding the cup. It’s warm against his fingertips.

He shivers.

-

Caduceus goes to sleep early.

-

He wakes with the fuzzy sense that not much time has passed, and the much clearer one that he will not be returning to slumber anytime soon.

That’s fine, though. He can wait.

-

He falls back to sleep eventually.

-

When he wakes, his headache is all-but-gone. He rolls over and it doesn’t hurt at all, not in the slightest.

He rolls over and is exhausted. There’s knots in his spine, twinges in his shoulders, and weights in his bones. He rolls over again and his eyes, though still closed, feel heavy, and he’s struggling to form coherent thoughts about any of it beyond how much he wants to go back to sleep.

But he can’t. He’s awake.

Caduceus sits up, after an age, or maybe just a moment or two. His back hurts. It’s cold. He wants to sleep.

That means something, probably.

Caduceus furrows his brow. It means…means…?

...Oh.

He fumbles for his staff, mumbles a few words.

The spell fizzles. It works, the magic is gone, but nothing happens.

So he isn’t sick, then. That’s good to know. He’s just….

Caduceus lets the thought trail into nothing.

-

Some time later, he pulls himself to his feet.

If he isn’t sick, he should get moving. There’s a whole day ahead.

-

Miss Throshvel is back. Caduceus summons a smile and wave.

His arm feels like lead all the way back to the inn.

-

He opens his mouth to order breakfast and can’t find the words.

That’s fine, though, apparently. Before even a second has passed, there’s a bowl of his usual porridge in front of him 

There are berries in it this morning. They taste too bright. The porridge itself tastes like paper.

He finishes it anyway.

-

Caduceus makes tea. It tastes like tea.

-

Caduceus meditates. There is no message, except to be patient and wait for it arrive.

Something boils under his skin, in his ribs. Too big for the space.

He stands and goes for another walk.

-

Halfway down the stairs, he realizes he’s forgotten his staff.

Part of him wants to keep walking.

He goes back to his room and stays there.

-

Caduceus meditates again, not to look for answers but for its own sake.

There’s a light pattering on the rooftop. It’s almost—

It is a comfort.

-

Caduceus makes more tea, for something to do.

He doesn’t knock on any doors. (Sometimes, Corrin says, people need space.)

He drinks the tea. It isn’t floral.

-

Caduceus is tired.

He makes more tea. He meditates.

It goes cold.

-

Caduceus stands, and then has to sit on the bed because his knees ache too much to stand. Something small bumps into his hip.

He picks it up.

...Oh, he thinks, staring at the recorder. Oh.

He holds it for a long moment, until the colors begin to blur before his eyes. The haze is sort of pretty, but the staring makes his eyes ache after a moment or two, so he blinks until his vision clears.

Then he blinks again, just once more, and slides easily through the motions for Mending, and opens his mouth—

And nothing happens. Just like at breakfast, he opens his mouth and there is nothing, no words, no sound, only an emptiness in the base of his throat, a hollow in his chest.

 _...Ah_ , Caduceus thinks.

It’s been...a while, since he lost words like this. But there’s any easy fix. He just has to substitute the Common for Sylvan sign, and then….

He raises his hands, and the hollow in his chest fills with brambles. He begins to cast, and his fingertips feel numb, and magic hums in his ears, and he lowers his hands and sets the recorder back on the bed.

Not….

Not right now, he thinks. It doesn’t feel right, just now. Maybe later.

Then he stands, ignoring the ache in his knees and eyes and throat, and begins to prepare more tea. With extra honey this time, maybe.

...Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice.

When the kettle whistles, it’s high and shrill and exactly the pitch Caduceus used to make when he borrowed—

He goes back to the bed and picks up the recorder.

He begins to cast Mending. When he’s nearly through, though—when he’s nearly through—when—

There are thorns in his throat. There is a vine wrapped tight around his left knee. There is fog beneath his feet. He cannot remember the Sylvan sign for _whole_. He cannot—he can’t—it’s—

He drops the spell, drops the recorder, turns round and goes back to the kettle.

 _Like a little breeze tossing a leaf in a circle_ , his father says inside his head, and doesn’t finish the line, so Caduceus does for him.

 _Wondering_ , he thinks, more sharply than his father ever did, _why it goes nowhere_.

He pushes himself to his feet, leaves the room, and goes for a walk. He takes a different route than usual, thinks about what he can _do_ today, what he wants to do today, what he can accomplish.

He nearly heads back to Mister Elkwood’s, but thinks of something else at the last second: he’s with a group.

He’s with a group and he’s one of only two clerics among their number. That’s...an almost painfully small number for a group this size. Especially one that gets into so much trouble. Especially one that gets...that gets separated and spread out as much as this one seems to. If they run into something alone, without himself or Jester….

Well, there’s something he can do about that.

-

Caduceus goes back to the inn, picks up his pack, and sits down with it in the middle of the room, cross-legged.

He sifts through its contents, the jumble of still-damp clothes and teacups and stones and shovel and other odds and ends, and then he pulls out a small, worn pounch.

He pushes his pack to the side and begins taking things out of the pouch.

A small mortar and pestle. Several sachets of herbs. A few vials of liquid, one of which shimmers when held up to the light, though he’s not had cause to watch the shifting colors in about twenty seasons. (He does not have any powdered unicorn’s horn, because the last in the little vial in the cupboard disappeared in the middle of the night, along with—)

Caduceus rearranges the ingredients, setting them all in a line, arranged by the order in which he will need them next, and not anything silly like their colors or required quantities. Then he looks them over twice more, going through the steps inside his head as he glances at each in turn, to be sure he’s not missed any.

He hasn’t.

So he begins, at last.

Grinding the herbs is first, these two together, those three later. Then one of the vials. Then stirring. Then standing to prepare the heat-stones, to modify the kettle for use as a cauldron. Then moving the mixture to the cauldron-kettle, and adding another of the vials, and stirring, and adding some water, and stirring some more. Then he offers a few words of prayer, for tradition’s sake, in Sylvan sign, and these trip easily off of his fingers, so easily, and….

Something eases, round his ribs. His ears flutter just once, and then are still, as he continues to tend the will-be potion.

This is nice.

This feels right.

-

He leaves the potion simmering, that night. It isn’t quite finished, but it’s getting there.

It’s getting there.

-

When Caduceus wakes the next morning, bright and early, he is considerably less exhausted, and the potion is nearing its final stage.

He leaves it be, heads off on his walk.

It’s raining again, and he’s forgotten his hat, but that’s okay. He won’t be out long enough to get really soaked. He’s got to get back in time for the next step, or he’ll have to throw the potion out and start all over, and he really doesn’t want to do that. So...just one loop today.

Yeah. Just the one.

He moves as unhurried as ever, drinking in the moment, because the changeover isn’t too soon.

...But he doesn’t stop and smell _all_ the roses, as it were, because the changeover isn’t too far off, either, and he doesn’t want to risk losing track of time. (His sense of it, on the best of days, is a little fuzzy. He’s not forgotten.)

He does pause when he reaches Miss Throshvel’s usual setup, but of course she’s not there. The rain. He hopes she’s doing all right, and her wife. Girlfriend? Partner. (Caduceus can’t remember which word she used, only the fuzzy impression of romance.)

He nods at the empty space where her cart should be, because it seems the thing to do, and then walks on, back to the inn.

-

Caduceus takes the makeshift cauldron off the heat, leaves it to cool.

Once it has, he’ll offer one last prayer, and then pour it into a vial and leave it somewhere cool and dark. There’s not exactly hallowed earth to dig up, here, but under the bed should do.

In the meantime….

Caduceus takes the smaller melon, heads downstairs, and asks if someone might cut it up for him, for half the melon and a few copper.

Someone will, as it happens, and he has half a melon for breakfast. It’s a little messier than he likes, he’s going to be sticky later, but...it’s nice. Crisp, cool. Sweet.

When he’s finished, he washes his hands, retrieves the second melon, and then knocks on Jester and Beau’s door.

The door opens, and there’s Jester, bright-eyed, shoulders tense.

For a moment, he’s so startled he can’t speak, and he wonders whether perhaps the conversation downstairs was a fluke. But then it passes, and he smiles, and Jester smiles, relaxing.

“Hi!” she says.

“Hey. I was, uh. Just wondering if you’d want this. It’s a bit big for just me, and, well, it’s sweet, so I thought maybe—”

“Sweet?”

He nods. “Oh, yeah. Real sweet.”

“Like strawberries?”

“Like strawberries,” he agrees. Then, “Well, not exactly. It doesn’t _taste_ like strawberries. But it’s sweet like them, yeah. Especially the big ones.”

Jester makes grabby hands, and Caduceus smiles and hands it over.

“Thank you!” She hugs it to her chest, twisting back-and-forth.

“Oh, of course.” Caduceus nods, and turns to go.

“Wait!”

He stops.

“Did you want some? This is a lot even for _me_ , and you look, you know, no offense, but you _kind of_ look like maybe you should eat more. And you _did_ just give this to me so it’s only fair—”

Caduceus laughs, startled. “Oh, uh. That’s very kind Jester, thank you. I...did just eat, though, and I’m just finishing something up, so I’m sorry, but—”

“Oh it doesn’t have to be right now! I just had, like, two thousand cupcakes. But maybe for lunch?”

Lunch….

Caduceus tumbles it over inside his head. The potion shouldn’t take terribly much longer, and he doesn’t exactly have plans after that? And he does like Jester, and it’s kind of her to offer, and….

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. That sounds really nice, I’d love to. Thank you.”

“Of course of _course_ , thank _you_! Now I gotta go get rid of all the evidence before Beau gets back and gets all grumpy about crumbs.”

Caduceus nods, and waves, and when the door closes leaves her to it, striding easily down the hall to his own room.

He’s got a potion to finish.

-

The solution isn’t quite cool enough yet, so Caduceus makes tea while he waits.

When the tea is gone, the solution seems about ready, so Caduceus finishes the last of the usual little rituals, just a few quick words, really, and then pours it into the largest vial he has, and stoppers it, and seals it tight.

Then he gets down on his hands and knees to tuck it under the bed, as far from the light as it will go. When he’s satisfied with its position, he tucks his spare shirt over the top of it. Protect it from any stray sunrays. (Not that they’ll hurt it, necessarily. There are many ways to make a healing potion, and he’s well aware that the one he’s used to contains some extra flourishes, and that the total darkness is one of them—but it’s nice, keeping closer to tradition. It’s nice. So he does it.)

Then he straightens up, brushes off his pants, and begins clear up the lingering mess. And, when that’s done, he surveys the room, nods to himself once, and sits on the bed.

Again, the recorder rolls into his hip.

He picks it up and listens to the sound of rain on the rooftop. It would be nice, he thinks, if his room had a proper window, instead of the shallow, heavily scratched oval one so far below his eye level he forgets it’s there. Maybe he could have put the vial on the ledge. It would’ve been cold enough, certainly, so close to the glass…. Maybe he should anyway?

But the ledge is curved, and not quite wide enough besides. The glass would fall, inevitably, and shatter. And think of the mess….

No. No, it can stay where it is for now.

Caduceus nods to himself, and becomes aware that he’s fiddling with the recorder again, turning it over in his hands.

He stills, closes his eyes, and tries to remember the Sylvan sign for _whole_. (He knows it in spoken Sylvan, he knows it in Giant, he knows it Common, he knows it in Elvish, he knows it’s among a scattered handful of words he knows in other languages as well. He should be able to remember it in this, too. He should. He should. He….)

Finds that he can, he thinks. Maybe. (Maybe. He’s not quite sure. There hasn’t been any sort of _click_ , just...a fuzzy sense that his hands should go like _this_.)

He hesitates. One minute. (He could, he supposes, simply cast it verbally. He can do that just fine today. It would be much simpler. But even as he thinks it, his lip curls. That’s not the way.)

Lightning flashes, outside the little window, and his shoulders wind tight, waiting one, two, three, four, f-ive, six, seven—

Thunder. His shoulders loosen the second it crashes, and he smiles.

Then turns back to the recorder, takes a breath, and begins to cast. The air buzzes with magic, and his hands hum, and the recorder grows warm in his palm, and—

The magic is gone. Used. He cast the spell.

But the recorder looks exactly the same. At least...so far as he can tell. He’s not an expert. (That was always—)

But, he thinks. It’s been painted. The few telltale signs he knows to look for may well simply be covered up. (It makes sense, really, the more he thinks about it. It’s not as though he noticed any physical signs of wear when he first saw it on the shelf, or after buying it, or in all the time he’s spent tumbling it over in his hands like a twig stripped entirely of bark.)

There’s simply no way to know.

...Well. That’s not really true. There is, in fact, a very simple way to know.

He can try to play something.

He can….

Caduceus runs his thumb over this recorder, back and forth, back and forth, following fragments of melodies as they wind their way through his head. Some a scant few seconds’ worth, some meandering as long as a maybe-minute. Some he knows the minutest details of, the keys, the origins, the colors they make in the air. Some he cannot even put a name to.

All repeat and slide into each other, and all are lovely, and two stand out above the rest, and one in particular settles somewhere just above his ribs. ( _Rose the pale yellow sun, rose the_ ….)

Caduceus turns the recorder over in his hands one more time, mapping out its grooves and its colors, his mind swimming with song. ( _Rose the pale yellow sun_ ….)

He smiles, a soft, small thing.

And tucks the recorder in his pocket, and goes to knock on Jester and Beau’s door with the recorder a small weight there, tapping occasionally against his leg in time with the song still winding through him.

He itches to pull it out, even as Jester opens the door and invites him inside, even as he steps over the threshhold, even as he sits down. Itches to turn it over just once more, raise to his lips, play, just once, _the pale yellow sun_.

But he doesn’t. He leaves it be. He waits.

It’s not time yet, after all, and some things….

Some things are about faith.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! & y'can find me on tumblr at arodrwho


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